Howl For Your Coffee
by LiteratiAngel
Summary: Lit. One-shot. Addictions are the hardest things to get over, whether it’s books, coffee or girls. It’s hard to let go of something that keeps you sustained…but you have to move on. Reviews are love!


**Howl For Your Coffee**

**Disclaimer: ****I do not own Gilmore Girls. The show and its characters belong to the WB network and the creative genius of Amy Sherman Palladino. If I *did* own it...well...let's just say that certain things would have ended differently...or not at all!**

**Disclaimer Take Two: I also don't own Howl...it belongs to the amazing poet that was Allen Ginsberg.**

**A/N: I suppose this fic could be taken as quite sad but that's not the way I look at it. Rory and Jess are moving on with their lives but they still think about each other and know that something could happen for them in the future, so in that respect, it's kinda fluffy...plus, I couldn't bear thinking of anything as sad today 'cause I'm in such an amazing mood!**

**A/N Take Two: This fic has taken me all day so I hope it's good enough for all you lovely readers out there...remember people, reviews equal love!**

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Books.

Odd fairytale worlds that I lose myself in whenever I can. My shelves are crammed with books, groaning under the weight of page upon page of…life. There's not one book on my shelf that I don't take the time to read and re-read over and over again.

Well, maybe there's just one that I avoid.

_I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night._

Every time I run my fingers along the spines of my books, trying to find my perfect reading companion for the day, I always brush across it. It's the same copy that I had when I was seventeen, battered, bruised. Graffitied.

I've considered reading it several times in recent weeks. The anniversary of the day we met was just over a month ago. A lot can happen in five years. Correction: a lot _did_ happen in five years. But every time I decide that today's the day and I begin to slide it off the shelf, something stops me, some irrefutable power.

_Who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war._

It's so…him.

Everything about it reminds me of him. He was a Beatnik in more ways than I can count, from his reading choices, right down to his the-Man-can-bite-my-ass attitude.

I wish I could call him. My Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise all rolled into one.

_The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!_

My hideous human angel. But I never knew if hideous was how I should describe him. He's nowhere near the usual description of hideous but he hurt me so much. I hurt him so much. We hurt each other. I shouldn't forget that.

Maybe just human is a better way to describe him?

My human angel.

Yes, that sounds about right.

I wander over to my bookshelves and replace my worn copy of Anna Karenina. I close my eyes and run my fingertips over my books until I find one that fits my mood. I prise it out from its place without opening my eyelids.

It's only when I curl up in my comfiest chair that I actually pay attention to the book I chose…

Howl and Other Poems

By

Allen Ginsberg.

~*~

The cup stares at me, its contents bubbling, steaming. That burnt smell that you can only get from a fresh cup of strong coffee…

That's what I'm imagining, anyway. In truth, I'm straining a teabag into my cup of lukewarm water.

The bedroom door clicks and I hear the soft pad of footsteps approaching the kitchen counter. She brushes past me and reaches for the kettle, pouring her own cup and gently dipping a teabag into the milky concoction. Coffee is never drunk in this apartment.

I shift slightly in my chair and let my eyes flicker over her. Sure, she's pretty. Black hair, blue eyes. Not the right blue, of course-more sapphire than cerulean. She's wearing my discarded shirt. It's rumpled and buttoned wrong but it looks nice on her. She's got that after-glow, the sort that makes her eyes wider than usual and her cheeks peachier. I'm happy.

Not that I would admit it to anyone but this is the first time I've been happy since _her_.

'Cept I can't even so much as look at a cup of coffee anymore.

Every girlfriend I've had since, I've banned from drinking coffee in my apartment. They just accept it. Some weird little quirk of mine, a strange fetish or just an aversion to caffeine.

Whatever they think it is, coffee is never drunk here.

It's been just over a month since the anniversary of our first meeting. I still remember stealing that stupid copy of Howl and scribbling some disjointed notes in it.

Every year on that day, I get up earlier than usual and make the journey to Connecticut. I don't get to see my uncle very often but I make a point of it every year, at least once a year. My very own tradition. Never had one of those before...I guess leaving was my tradition.

So every year, on our…anniversary, I go to Luke's and he pours me a cup of coffee.

Addictions are the hardest things to get over, whether it's books, coffee or girls. It's hard to let go of something that keeps you sustained…but you have to move on.

That one cup of coffee a year is my way of saying goodbye to all the crap we put each other through. Welcoming a time when we can put it all behind us and start afresh.

Because I have a firm belief that, like an addiction, it's never gonna be truly over for me and Rory.


End file.
